


with you, i'll go (to countries i've never seen)

by mfalfanclub



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Doyu, Enemies to Lovers, Friends to Lovers, Gambling, Las Vegas, M/M, One Shot, There will be fluff, UST, a coming out is involved, a little sprinkling of jaeten, and first time gay things, and of marriage for that matter, and some pining, but i've never been to vegas, but yeah mostly just sexual tension between frenemies, everyone likes to slander yuta for being straight but he's not, lots of chicken nuggets (300 of them), lots of discourse around the phrase no homo, lots of making out because i can, mentions of divorce, piecing together a blackout night, please read the author's notes to find out the origins of this storie!!, they're really more frenemies than friends or enemies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22314781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mfalfanclub/pseuds/mfalfanclub
Summary: After night 1 of Jaehyun's bachelor party weekend in Vegas, Doyoung and Yuta wake up with matching wedding rings on their fingers. This is a disaster because: A) Yuta is straight, B) Doyoung may or may not have feelings for him which are already difficult enough to ignore, and C) neither of them can remember a single thing that happened last night.
Relationships: Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung/Nakamoto Yuta
Comments: 42
Kudos: 344





	with you, i'll go (to countries i've never seen)

**Author's Note:**

> the title is taken from the song "time to say goodbye" by andrea bocelli and sarah brightman, one of the songs that is played at the bellagio fountains in vegas! andrea bocelli's original is titled "con te partirò," or "with you i'll go."

It was Doyoung who woke up first. He’d been dreaming. Something vivid. As he came out of it, all he could remember was the impression of a smell, a smell that reminded him of when he was a kid—no, of the woods behind his parents’ house where he used to…the woods where… He grasped for the dream but it was falling away. Suddenly the sunlight through the windows was too bright, and the taste in his mouth was too roadkillish. He opened his eyes.

Light. Heavy and yellow from the west-facing window. Could it already be that late in the afternoon? “Ueulgh,” he said and lifted his head from the floor. How miraculously stupid—he’d managed to get back to his bedroom, but only as far as the floor inside the doorway. Under his head there had been a bundled-up shirt in place of a pillow. It wasn’t his. He himself, he noted with no little relief, had made it through the night fully clothed.

There was a glass three-quarters full of clear liquid on the floor next to him. He eyed it for a moment, one hand on the side of his head. No. The chance that it wasn’t water was too high. He stood up and lurched his way between an empty champagne bottle (how had it ended up in here?) and a veritable explosion of pizza crusts strewn across the floor (pizza? When…?) in the direction of the bathroom. Someone, it looked like Yuta, was shirtless lying facedown atop Doyoung’s bed. Doyoung stepped around a kazoo lying in front of the bathroom door and staggered to the sink, running the water.

Once he’d scooped water into his mouth and stolen a swig of Johnny’s mouthwash, he took a breath. His phone. Where was—oh, it was in his pocket. 3:38pm. Okay. His wallet was on the ground near the toilet. His necklace was still on. Count the rings. One, two; three; four, five, six.

One, two, three, four, five, s—

“No nonono,” he said, and counted the rings a third time, although it was clear by now that he was wearing an extra ring, and the extra ring was on his left hand’s fourth finger. He held it up in front of his face, twisted it off his finger. It was a simple gold band. A marking along the inside caught his eye. He peered closer. There were words in English carved in lilting script into the inside of the ring. It said, “ _Las Vegas. April, 2019. Now Our Love Is Forever <3_”

“No,” Doyoung said again and went out of the bedroom, passing Yuta’s unmoving form and throwing open the door only to trip over what could have been a cadaver sprawled out in the hallway.

“Fuck!”

Doyoung turned over, rubbing at one throbbing knee. The cadaver was Xuxi, and he hadn’t been as lucky as Doyoung last night—the kid was wearing nothing but a grass skirt. There was a flower lei on the ground a few feet away. Doyoung wasn’t entirely convinced that Xuxi wasn’t actually dead until he fluttered his eyelids, threw an arm over his head, and went still again.

Doyoung stepped over him, went back into his room, yanked a blanket off the bottom of the bed from under Yuta’s feet, and tossed it over Xuxi before aiming for the kitchen. Then something terrifying occurred to him and he ran back down the hall, pulled Xuxi’s left hand out from beneath the blanket and looked at the ring finger. It was empty. He breathed out and dropped Xuxi’s hand. Xuxi mumbled several incoherent words, or maybe they were coherent Chinese words, and turned over.

Doyoung navigated between beer bottles, random articles of clothing, strings of plastic Mardi Gras beads and the odd pizza crust to the front of the house they’d rented for Jaehyun’s bachelor party, praying to find someone who was awake. Taeil and Johnny were snoring on either side of a bottle of Jack Daniels on the couch in the living room, Johnny missing a sock and Taeil with the words “WILL SING BALLAD IN EXCHANGE FOR HANDJOB” scrawled in pink on a piece of paper taped to his chest. Mark was tucked neatly as a cat into the loveseat under the window in the foyer. Jungwoo was in the front bathroom’s enormous tub, lying in the middle of a perfect circle of glitter, like someone had tried to exorcise him by trapping him in a Las Vegas-style pentagram. Taeyong’s bedroom was open and empty; Sicheng and Jaehyun’s doors were both shut.

Doyoung, unable to remember anything that happened the night before past the Jello shots he’d taken because of Jungwoo at the second club, walked into the kitchen with his hands in his hair and found Donghyuck sitting cross-legged on the marble island, a half-eaten sugar cookie in one hand and his phone in the other. Hyuck glanced up, looked Doyoung over, lifted his eyebrows briefly and looked down to his phone again.

Doyoung looked from the band on his ring finger to the blender sticky with piña colada mix to what appeared to be a bunless hot dog sitting on top of the microwave and said, “What—what happened last night?”

Hyuck considered him indifferently. “You’re asking me like I know,” he said. Then he spun around and hopped off the island, tiptoeing around pieces of popcorn with his bare feet. He licked sugar off his fingers and walked past Doyoung. “I’m going back to sleep.”

“Drink some water before you…” Doyoung said over his shoulder, but Donghyuck had left the room.

Doyoung opened the woefully understocked fridge and took out the last banana, then brushed glitter off a chair and sat down. There was no way. This was definitely not a wedding band on his ring finger and he was absolutely not married. But what else could…? He wracked his memory. They’d started yesterday with mimosas at breakfast, which had turned into wine at lunch, and then a succession of fruity cocktails at the dinner place followed by at least two hours of pregaming back at the house—well Johnny had called it pregaming but it wasn’t really pre-anything. Doyoung was exhausted by eleven and had limited himself to one drink at the first club, but then the demon had managed to rope him into another of his games and they’d bet one Jello shot for each one of their friends they couldn’t get to kiss them, which had turned quickly into a perfect disaster. Jungwoo, of course, had grabbed a kiss from Sicheng within seconds—now that Doyoung thought about it, they’d probably planned it, Sicheng had looked far too smug—while Doyoung had been forced to down shot after shot as he took rejection after rejection. He remembered Johnny looking at him and guffawing; Jaehyun drunkenly threatening to call Ten and tell him that Doyoung was trying to steal him; Jungwoo and Sicheng’s grins as Doyoung threw back another Jello shot. What else? Mark giving him a startled look and saying, “I have to go to the bathroom.” Taeil, the green club lights playing over his face, smiling and saying “You wanna die?” Where had Taeyong been? Taeyong would have given him a kiss and put him out of his misery. Maybe he had, Doyoung couldn’t remember. The last image in his mind was his hand on Yuta’s shoulder and Yuta trying not to laugh as, on the verge of tears, Doyoung explained the predicament he’d gotten himself into.

Had Yuta given him a kiss? No. That raging heterosexual, never. Yuta had probably leaned in close to Doyoung’s ear and whispered, “You wish,” or something similarly half-seductive-half-douchey. It didn’t matter. There were bigger issues than who had kissed him last night at the club. Specifically who, if anyone, had kissed him somewhere _outside_ the club. Doyoung pulled out his phone. There was nothing suspicious in his texts, no unsaved numbers, no contact names he didn’t recognize. Only six unread messages. One was from Taeyong to the group chat—“ _off to get dicked down don’t wait up xx_ ,” timestamped 2:14am. Ah. So that was where Taeyong had gone. There were a few more messages in the group chat, including Johnny cheering Taeyong on and an indecipherable message from Jaehyun an hour later, “ _HHAA jihnt i have he red engs KETSGIii_.”

Then there was a message from Ten, in answer to Doyoung’s “ _IF JAEHYUN TELLS YU I AM TRYING TO STEAL HIM FORM YOU, HE IS LYng!! it is all woo’s fault_ ,” that said “ _lmaooo take him i’m only marrying him for the family fortune anyway,_ ” and a message from Yuta. “ _doyo doyo wherefore art thou doyo_ ”

It struck Doyoung that perhaps none of his friends had given him a kiss and Jungwoo had forced him to look for a stranger who would do the deed, and that Doyoung had found a stranger and maybe even married them, in which case it _would_ all be Jungwoo’s fault, just like he had told Ten. He pulled up Instagram. His own story was unhelpful, consisting of little more than Jaehyun taking shots while the rest of them chanted “GROOM IS DOOMED, GROOM IS DOOMED.” He clicked out and went straight to Jungwoo’s story.

It was several minutes long. He bypassed everything he remembered and then watched through a few clips of Taeil twerking and Hyuck chasing Mark down a dimly lit hallway before he found a video of himself.

“—can’t stop until someone does,” Jungwoo’s pretty speaking voice was saying behind the camera, and Doyoung cut him a scorching look. The story cut to Jaehyun face-to-face with Doyoung on the dancefloor, telling him off unintelligibly. There was Doyoung taking a shot and rounding on Jungwoo to say, “Honestly what circle of hell did you rise out of?” and then the videos of Doyoung were interrupted by Taeil doing a body shot off Johnny, of which Doyoung had no recollection whatsoever, with the caption “ _THINGS ARE FINALLY GETTING JUICY_ ” and some wet emojis.

Doyoung twisted the ring around his finger as the video cut and the camera made its way through the dark club between several tightly-packed bodies until it eventually came upon Doyoung and Yuta, standing at the table with their heads together. Yuta was holding back laughter, the same way Doyoung remembered. “…deal with the _devil_ ,” Doyoung was saying miserably, “and now I’m doomed to keep taking Jello shots until the end of _eternity_ …”

“Unless you find a prince charming to kiss you and break the curse, right?” Yuta said.

“No one here is that charitable,” Doyoung said, throwing a dirty look towards the dancefloor.

“Charitable? Yeah, that’s not the word I would use…”

Out of the corner of his eye, Doyoung glanced into the camera and then up at Jungwoo in horror, shouting, “YOU!” Then the story cut again and Doyoung was saying to Yuta, “I thought you said no one here was charitable enough,” and Yuta rolled his eyes and said, “ _You_ said that,” and Doyoung said, “But you agreed!”

Yuta set his margarita down heavily on the table and said, “Yeah! Because it’s not charity!” and Doyoung gave a wide-eyed laugh, saying something like, “Who are you and what did you do with No-homo-kamoto?” to which Yuta yelled, “Do you want the kiss or not?”

There was no talking in the next clip, only Jungwoo’s laughter as Yuta put a hand on the side of Doyoung’s face and kissed him, then kissed him again, long enough to make Doyoung watching the video drop his phone to the table with a clatter. Jungwoo gave an inarticulate shout and Doyoung’s face turned towards the camera with an expression of confusion before the story jumped to Jaehyun drunkenly drawling to the camera, “I wish Ten were here. Ten, if you see this, come to Vegas. It’s fun…”

Doyoung shut his phone off. “Oh, fuck me,” he breathed. He’d remembered it. Not the kiss. The dream. Yuta had been in it. The smell was his cologne.

“DOYOUNG! Thank fuck. Doyoung.” It was none other than Yuta himself, crashing into the kitchen sideways with his hair falling out of his ponytail, still shirtless, though that wasn’t much of a surprise, with his mouth running a mile a minute. “Oh my god, I thought I’d never find someone else who’s awake, everybody’s knocked out in the most random fucking places. Dude, you’ve gotta help me.”

“Jesus Christ,” Doyoung said, rubbing his hands over his face.

“What the fuck is all this shit? Did someone spill the…? Doyoung, I fucked up.” Yuta grabbed the lip of the table. Doyoung jumped and leaned back. “I can barely remember anything from last night,” said Yuta, “anything past like, 1 or 2 in the morning, and now I wake up and what the fuck is this?” He held up left hand.

Doyoung’s eyes followed the curve of Yuta’s forearm past his wrist and over the lines on his palm to the gleaming gold band on his slender ring finger.

“A _ring!_ ” Yuta answered for him, throwing up his hands and spinning around, “A fucking wedding ring. You know what it fucking says on the inside? ‘ _Now Our Love Is Forever_ ’! What the hell?”

Doyoung said, “Oh, my god.”

“I know! And also, I can’t find my fucking Gucci shirt, which is great, because it’s the most expensive thing I own. The most expensive thing I own has disappeared.” Yuta lifted Doyoung’s abandoned banana from the table and bit off a chunk, talking around it as he paced in circles. “Or, _or_ , my rando wife has it right now, and I’m going to have to spend the rest of the weekend tracking it down like some fucking Cinderella-ass glass slipper.”

“I think I slept on it,” muttered Doyoung.

“What? My shirt?”

“Yeah.”

Yuta stopped tornadoing around the kitchen. “Why did you sleep on my shirt?”

Doyoung rested his forehead on his fingertips and looked up at Yuta. “Do I look like I know?”

Yuta frowned at him for a second, then resumed pacing, kicking at a pile of glitter on the floor. “Okay, well, that’s even worse, because now I have no way to find whoever I married last night. I don’t even remember talking to any girls last night anyway, I mean, we were in gay clubs the whole time, weren’t we? Like, I’m sure there _were_ straight girls there, but I don’t remember any—do you have any idea where we went after Oasis?”

“No. Yuta—”

“Because I have bits of memory, like, on and off, but they’re all patchy and useless, like one second Mark’s barfing in a urinal, and then the next second I’m out on the street looking for you but you’re not—”

“Yuta!” Doyoung, who had been holding his left hand up for a while now, put down every finger except the one with the ring on. Yuta threw him a look.

“What—? Wow. You’re flipping me off right now? That’s very helpful, Doyoung, I knew I could count on—”

Doyoung ripped the ring off his finger and held it out towards Yuta, who finally stopped talking and looked down at it openmouthed. A second of silence passed. Then Yuta took the ring from Doyoung’s palm and read from the inside, “ _Now Our Love Is…_ ” His eyes widened. Then they met Doyoung’s.

Doyoung’s face began to burn and he snatched the ring out of Yuta’s fingers, stuffing it into a pocket. Yuta slowly sat down across from him. “Why—why—why aren’t you putting it back…”

“Back on?” Doyoung stared at him. “Why would I put it back on?”

“Uhh…” Yuta looked at his own ring with a puzzled frown, hair falling into his eyes. Heavenly as usual.

“Why were you guys yelling?”

They both turned to the door. Mark was standing there, the hair at the back of his head sticking straight up, rubbing at one eye.

“What?” Doyoung said.

“We weren’t yelling,” said Yuta.

Hyuck appeared in the doorway and said, “Yuta was yelling at Doyoung for flipping him off,” as he placed his chin on Mark’s shoulder. Mark threw him off and padded in sock feet across the kitchen to the refrigerator.

“I thought you were going back to bed,” said Doyoung.

Hyuck shrugged, following Mark closely. “My pillow got up and walked away.”

“What does that even mean?” Doyoung said.

“He means Mark is his pillow,” said Yuta.

“Ew, _Jesus_ , Mark, everyone uses that carton, you literal troglodyte, who raised you?” Hyuck said. Mark lowered the milk carton from his mouth and looked at him.

“Can you stop acting like such a male,” said Hyuck. “You’re embarrassing me.”

“What did you call me?”

“What? A male? I’m sorry. Should I take it back? Shit, I stepped over the line, I—”

“Shut up. I meant the…trog…you know what I fucking meant.”

“Ha. Neanderthal.”

“Okay, you can stop calling me names anytime, I just don’t know what the word means—”

“I wasn’t calling you a Neanderthal! ‘Troglodyte’ _means_ Neanderthal, you fucking caveman. Christ, why am I even friends with you.”

Doyoung caught Yuta’s eye. Yuta looked down towards Doyoung’s hand and then back up. Doyoung shook his head. Yuta widened his eyes and pointedly looked at Doyoung’s hand again. Doyoung squinted a frown, and Yuta tapped at his own ring. Doyoung rolled his eyes. “ _Your ring_ ,” Yuta mouthed silently. “ _The ring_.”

Doyoung mouthed back, “ _I’m not putting it back on_ ,” and Yuta pouted sullenly at the dirty blender. Doyoung folded his arms. He felt like kicking something. Yuta was still shirtless. Annoying son of a bitch.

There was a sound at the doorway and Doyoung looked away from Yuta’s abs. Taeil walked into the kitchen, the handjob sign disappeared from his front. He stepped on something—a piece of popcorn or a stray bottle cap—and a look of chagrin passed over his face. He reached between Mark and Hyuck, who were still exchanging jabs in front of the open refrigerator, and pulled out the milk carton.

“Just so you know,” said Hyuck in a raised voice, “Mark was raised by wild boars and drank straight from the carton.”

“Wild boars don’t drink milk,” said Mark accusatorily.

Taeil ignored them and opened several cabinets until he found a box of cereal.

Doyoung felt Yuta kick his shin under the table and instinctually returned the kick with twice the force. Yuta gave him an appalled look, and Doyoung made a face. “ _Let me see your ring_ ,” Yuta mouthed. Doyoung made the face again. Yuta, his words becoming audible, whispered, “Let me see it!”

“Shh!” Doyoung hissed.

“See what?” said Donghyuck, following on Mark’s heels to the table.

“Nothing,” said Doyoung.

Yuta folded his arms, mirroring Doyoung, and scowled at him as Taeil slid into the seat next to him with his cereal bowl. Doyoung gave Yuta a look.

“Nothing?” said Mark.

“His ring,” said Yuta.

“Which one?” Hyuck said, and at the same time Doyoung groaned. “ _Yuta!_ ”

“What? You want to just pretend nothing happened?” Yuta threw a hand out to Taeil, Mark and Hyuck. “We have to ask them if they remember anything!”

“What? What happened?” said Mark.

“Did you get married last night?” screamed Hyuck, pointing at Yuta’s ring. Taeil choked on his cereal.

“No,” said Doyoung as Taeil coughed and Hyuck thumped him on the back, “I mean, we don’t remember.”

“We don’t remember,” said Yuta, “so we don’t know. Give me your ring.”

“No,” said Doyoung. “For fuck’s sake, can you put your shirt back on?”

Any other day, Yuta would have said something like, “What, are my abs distracting to you?” In fact, if Doyoung’s memory served, Yuta _had_ said that at some point in the past. Now he just lowered his eyes to the table and said, “Um. I don’t know where it is.”

“I told you, I slept on it,” said Doyoung.

“Why did you sleep on his shirt?” squeaked Hyuck, who had sat down and linked an arm through Taeil’s.

Yuta scowled. “How would I know where you slept?”

“It’s in my bedroom,” said Doyoung. “On the floor.”

“Fuck the shirt,” said Taeil, waving his spoon. He nodded at Doyoung. “Show us your ring.”

Doyoung looked between their expectant faces, huffed, fished the ring out of his pocket and slapped it onto the table. Yuta pulled off his own ring off and placed it next to Doyoung’s. The five of them leaned their heads over the rings.

“Fuck,” said Mark, “they’re wedding rings.”

“They’re exactly the same,” said Taeil.

“Are there any markings on them? Any clues?” Hyuck said excitedly.

“Yeah,” said Yuta.

“What?” said Taeil.

“They both uh…” Yuta avoided their eyes. “They say ‘ _Now Our Love Is Forever’_ on the inside.”

Mark cackled.

“Ooh, let me see,” Hyuck said, grabbing for Yuta’s ring. Yuta smacked his hand away. “Ow!” said Hyuck, cradling his hand.

“Don’t touch it,” said Yuta, picking up the ring.

“O- _kay_ ,” said Hyuck, “sorry it’s so important to you.”

Yuta rounded on him. “No one said—”

“My preeciouusss,” Hyuck croaked in a Gollum voice, drumming his fingers together.

Mark laughed and Yuta scowled, whacking the back of Hyuck’s head. “Owww!” Hyuck howled.

“So you don’t remember anything at all?” said Taeil, chewing on his cereal.

“Nothing after we got to Oasis,” said Yuta, who was peering at the inside of the ring, turning it this way and that. “What do you guys remember?”

“I went to a casino after Oasis,” said Taeil.

“You did?” said Hyuck, turning to look at him.

Taeil nodded. “Yeah. But you guys weren’t there. It was me, Lucas, Jaehyun, Johnny and…I think that was it.”

“Did you win any money?” said Hyuck excitedly.

Taeil swallowed a bite of cereal and said, “Stacks.”

“Oh, shit,” said Mark.

“Guys, focus. Mark,” said Doyoung, “Hyuck, what do you remember after we got to Oasis?”

“I remember you trying to get me to kiss you,” said Mark with one eye squinted.

“What?” yelped Yuta and Hyuck at the same time.

Taeil snapped his fingers. “Oh my god. Me too. You wanted me to kiss you so you could get out of a bet you had with Jungwoo or something.”

Doyoung put his forehead in his hand. “Don’t bring up Satan to me right now.”

“Well maybe he remembers what happened to you!” said Hyuck. There was a noise in the hallway and he turned around, saying, “Woo?” to find not Jungwoo, but Lucas stumbling into the kitchen, wearing actual clothes now, the flower lei jauntily double-wrapped around his head like a crown.

“Hey, you’re not dead,” said Doyoung.

“Probably a miracle,” said Lucas, clapping his hands together and peering into the cups on the island to see if they were clean. “Why are you looking for Jungwoo? He’s still asleep in the bathtub.”

“The bathtub,” repeated Mark, sounding impressed.

“We’re trying to figure out what happened last night,” said Doyoung. “We wanted to know what he remembers.”

“Yuta and Doyoung got married!” said Hyuck, pointing at Doyoung’s ring on the table.

Lucas laughed. Then he looked at them and his smile fell away. “What, really?”

“Really!” said Hyuck gleefully.

“Hyuck, shut the fuck up,” said Doyoung.

“We can’t remember what happened,” said Yuta, “so we need to know what Jungwoo was doing. Because the last thing we remember, we were with him. We think.”

Lucas, who was crunching on an apple that looked miniscule in his huge hand, said, “Well did you check your Instagram stories and see if there’s anything on there?”

“Ooh!” said Hyuck, rubbing his hands.

“I already looked,” said Doyoung. “All my story had was a clip of Jaehyun taking shots.”

“That’s it?” said Mark.

“Unhelpful,” sniffed Hyuck, reaching for the glass of orange juice Mark had poured himself.

“Well, I’m sorry I’m not a social media-crazy Gen Z-er who can’t survive if they don’t record everything they do and put it online for hundreds of strangers to see,” said Doyoung.

Hyuck said, “Okay, boomer,” and gulped the orange juice.

“What?” said Doyoung.

“What the fuck, that’s my juice,” said Mark. Hyuck made an unconcerned noise.

“Did you look at Yuta’s story?” said Taeil.

Yuta held up his phone and said, “I just checked, I didn’t put anything up.”

“Try Jungwoo’s then,” said Lucas, sliding onto the bench at the table next to Doyoung.

Yuta raised his eyebrows and said, “Oh, good idea,” clicking on Jungwoo’s icon. Taeil looked over his shoulder curiously.

“I can’t see,” said Hyuck. “Put it in the middle. Put it in the—!”

“I am. I _am_.”

Yuta placed his phone in the center of the table and all their heads leaned over it in a little semicircle again. Doyoung, suddenly feeling queasy, got up from the table. Yuta looked up at him sharply, almost woundedly, as if hurt that Doyoung didn’t seem to care what might show up on the story. Doyoung avoided his eye and started gathering dirty cups.

“This is all from before Oasis,” said Hyuck, reaching to tap Yuta’s phone and skip some of the story.

Mark grabbed for the phone himself. “Don’t skip anything! There might be clues in there.”

“It’s too long, we have to—”

“Get off, you children. Get your hands off my phone.” Yuta swatted their hands away and skipped forward himself. Doyoung busied himself washing dishes at the sink. There were tiny sounds of music and speech coming from Yuta’s phone. Doyoung heard himself talking about making a deal with the devil, and then arguing with Yuta, calling him “ _No-homo-kamoto_.” Hyuck and Mark snickered, then a moment later started yelling. “OH MY GOD! THEY’RE MAKING OUT!”

“SHHH!” said Lucas and Taeil.

Doyoung felt his face flush hot. He scrubbed feverishly at a stain at the bottom of a cup. Yuta still hadn’t said anything. A second later Taeil stood up, extricating himself from Hyuck’s clinging arms, and said, “Well, case closed. You got fucking married.”

“They were making out,” said Hyuck again in disbelief. Mark started to belly-laugh.

Doyoung permitted himself a glance at Yuta, who was still staring at the phone. He had a look of soft, blank bewilderment on his face, like he’d just found out that everyone knew something he had thought to be his own secret. Doyoung’s heart seized up strangely in his chest. Yuta’s eyes flickered up to Doyoung’s, and Doyoung looked down into the sink quickly.

“You guys should keep watching,” said Taeil, placing his bowl in the sink beside the stack of cups Doyoung had assembled. “There might be more clues to where you went.”

“Where are _you_ going?” said Hyuck.

“To my room,” said Taeil, “to listen to music and possibly sleep more before our next binge starts. Yuta and Doyoung, good luck figuring your shit out.”

“Yuta, I’m so sorry,” Lucas said as Taeil left the room while Hyuck and Mark dissolved further into peals of laughter, “I always thought you were straight. I’m literally so sorry.”

“He _is_ straight!” shrieked Hyuck through laughter. “That’s the best part of this!”

Lucas’s eyes widened. Yuta glared at Hyuck and opened his mouth as if to defend himself but no sound came out.

“Wait, wait,” said Mark. “Listen. The story.”

Jungwoo’s story, which had continued to play, was squealing with small voices. It sounded like Jungwoo telling someone to wait up. Doyoung, who hadn’t watched this far, edged closer to the table and gazed sideways at the phone while drying out a cup he’d washed.

“Are you guys leaving?” said Jungwoo behind the camera.

The camera swiveled in the dark and landed on Yuta’s shadowed face, which leaned closer and shouted, “We’re going to find adventure!”

“We’re going to find pizza,” said Doyoung’s voice in the background.

“Adventure!”

“A pizza adventure?”

“Yes,” said Yuta, shooting his angel smile in the direction of Doyoung’s voice. The clip ended and then Sicheng was talking at the camera in Mandarin at length. After several seconds of Mandarin, Jungwoo said, “What does that mean?” and Sicheng said, “Fuck them kids.” Then Jungwoo’s story ended.

Yuta reached out and closed his phone.

“Pizza,” said Lucas.

“That’s our key,” said Doyoung.

“What key?” said Yuta.

Doyoung ran water into his clean glass. “We have to figure out where we went last night. So we can—so we can find the church or whatever and get a…an undo.” He tipped back the glass of water and gulped it down.

“What,” said Hyuck, “a divorce?”

“No!” Doyoung slammed the empty cup down on the counter more emphatically than he’d intended. Yuta jumped. “Not a divorce. A—a cancelation,” said Doyoung. “An annulment!”

“An annulment for what?” said Johnny. Doyoung spun around. Johnny’s lanky form was leaning through the doorway, one hand on the top of the doorframe, a peculiar grin on his still sleep-blurred face. A yawning Jaehyun appeared behind him.

“For his marriage to Yuta,” Hyuck supplied helpfully.

Doyoung let out a sound halfway between a groan and a shout. He pointed at Yuta, who looked back at him with startled eyes. “I’m going to go shower,” said Doyoung. “When I get out, you and I are going to go…figure out how we can get an annulment. Okay? Okay. Good talk.” With that he pushed past Johnny and Jaehyun, and stalked away down the hall, stomach roiling. Behind him he heard Johnny and Jaehyun start to laugh incredulously while Hyuck parroted, “What happened to _No-homo-kamoto?_ ”

An hour later Doyoung was putting the rental stick-shift into gear and pulling out the driveway into the street, while Yuta sat next to him in the passenger seat. They’d both showered, and Yuta smelled good. Too good. Not like the expensive cologne he’d worn last night, but like the green tea shampoo he’d brought from home. His long hair wasn’t fully dry yet. Doyoung found this fact unaccountably vexing. If Yuta had just dried his hair better, maybe Doyoung wouldn’t keep noticing how nice it smelled.

“So the plan is to go to Oasis,” said Yuta, leaning his head against the window, “then find the closest pizza place?”

“Uh huh,” said Doyoung, turning back to the road.

“And then what?”

“We’ll…see if they know where we went next.”

“How will they know where we went next?” said Yuta. “The people who were working there last night probably won’t even be here today.”

“We just need clues,” said Doyoung. “Otherwise we have nothing to go off of.”

The other boys had explained Yuta and Doyoung’s situation to Johnny and Jaehyun, and then to Jungwoo and Sicheng. Taeyong was still out—“ _having a grand day with my new 48-hr sugar daddy!!_ ” he’d texted—and everyone else said that they didn’t remember seeing Yuta or Doyoung after they left Oasis. They’d typed “ _now our love is forever las vegas_ ” into Google to see if it would turn up any wedding chapels, but the search was a dead end.

“So like,” Yuta said, rolling down the window and sticking his face out like a golden retriever puppy, “you really think we got married. I mean, married married.”

“What other kind of married is there?” Doyoung said.

“I don’t know. I just mean, like, you’re sure this happened?”

Doyoung’s hair was being whipped in his face by the wind from Yuta’s side. Doyoung pressed the driver’s side button to roll up Yuta’s window. Yuta sent him a sideways glance.

“How else do you explain us disappearing at 2 in the morning and then waking up with matching wedding rings,” Doyoung said.

Yuta, still eyeing him, pressed the button to roll his window down again. Air buffered in, filling the car with the scent of Yuta’s shampoo. Doyoung slammed on the brakes in front of a red light just ahead and the car idled.

“Do you remember us kissing last night?” said Yuta after a few seconds.

Doyoung shook his head, grinding his teeth unconsciously. “No.”

Yuta tilted his head out the window again. His hair was shiny in the yellow sun. “Then why weren’t you surprised at Jungwoo’s story?” he said.

“Because. I watched it before you got up.”

“Oh.”

They watched a few clusters of young people pass in front of the car over the crosswalk. Yuta’s eyes followed the backs of a group of women their age. Doyoung accidentally bit the inside of his cheek while grinding his teeth.

“What did you think?” said Yuta after several seconds had passed.

“What?” said Doyoung, who’d forgotten what they were talking about.

“When you saw Woo’s story.”

Doyoung looked at him again. Yuta’s eyes had stopped following the girls and were on Doyoung.

“I don’t know,” said Doyoung. “What kind of question is that?”

“It’s just—what do you mean, what kind of question…? It’s just a question.”

Doyoung shook his head. “I didn’t think anything.”

“So you didn’t think it was weird?”

“Of course I thought it was weird. In what world is it not weird?”

Yuta blew a breath of air out between his lips. The light turned green and Doyoung stepped on the gas. Yuta leaned his head out the window again, a smile growing on his face while the breeze blew his hair back. Doyoung pressed the button to roll up the passenger window. The glass hit Yuta’s neck and he made a startled noise, then turned to glare at Doyoung.

“It’s probably not even legit,” said Doyoung.

Yuta stared at him. “What?”

“Well because we’re not even citizens of the United States, like, it can’t be legally binding or anything—”

“Oh, you mean the marriage.”

“What the hell did you think I meant? Wonder Girls disbanding?”

Yuta was slumped in the seat with his arms folded. “Well, we were talking about the kiss. You jumped subjects.”

“So you’re still—fine, no, the kiss happened. Since you want to talk about it so bad, yes, it happened. Any other thoughts you want to share on that topic before we move on?”

“In fact, yes,” said Yuta.

“Fine. What?”

“If it was so weird, then why did you do it?”

Doyoung lifted a hand off the steering wheel and said, “No, no, I didn’t do it, _you_ kissed _me_ , it was on Jungwoo’s st—”

“You came to me begging me to kiss you! You wouldn’t leave me alone!”

“No! I was venting about Jungwoo being evil and you grabbed my face and—!”

“Because you wanted me to, and plus you kissed me back!”

“I never asked you to,” said Doyoung.

“Fine, sorry I did you a favor,” sulked Yuta, looking out the window.

“I don’t even remember. Okay? I don’t remember.” Doyoung slowed the car as he drove past a kid on a bike and then picked up speed again. “You don’t either, right?”

Yuta had the look of a petulant toddler on his beautiful face. He spoke flatly. “I remembered after we watched the story.”

“What?” said Doyoung. “You _remember?_ Why didn’t you tell me? What else do you—”

“There’s nothing else. I just remembered that—one—those few seconds. I don’t remember anything else after. Okay?”

Doyoung huffed. “Great. Just great.”

Yuta placed his finger on the window button. Doyoung felt Yuta’s gaze boring into the side of his head but kept his eyes on the road. Yuta pushed the button so the window rolled down just a few centimeters, then stuck his fingertips through the crack.

“If it’s not legally binding,” Yuta said a minute later, “then why do we have to go to all this trouble to find the chapel and get a divorce?”

“An _annulment_ ,” said Doyoung.

“Is that even the term?”

Doyoung turned onto a wider street lined with bars whose facades looked washed-out, almost sickly, in the light of day. “Does it not bother you at all that we might be, like, officially wedded in the eyes of God or something?”

Yuta snorted and said, “God, like, the fairytale man in the sky? No, I can’t say it bothers me.”

Violently Doyoung wrenched the steering wheel to the right so Yuta was thrown left, falling over the center console against Doyoung’s shoulder. Yuta scrabbled to right himself, pushing against Doyoung’s knee and sitting up. “What the fuck was that?”

“Sorry,” said Doyoung. “Jesus took the wheel.”

“Why are you acting like this whole thing is my fault?” said Yuta hotly. “You’re just as responsible for marrying me as I am for—”

“Nuh-uh! I never said this was your fault. You were being an asshole. I just want to find out what happened last night and fix it, okay? Once we find the chapel and make them, like, take it back, then we can go meet the boys for dinner and everything will go on like normal.”

“Normal,” repeated Yuta, softly, like the word had drained all the irritation out of him. A few seconds passed. Then he said, “There’s Oasis.”

Doyoung’s eyes darted up the road to the blue and green neon sign. The A was flickering. He hadn’t noticed last night. He parked along the street and got out, looking up and down the sidewalk.

“See a pizza place?” said Yuta behind him, closing the passenger door and reaching up to tie back his hair.

Doyoung didn’t see a pizza place. He saw a salad place, a McDonalds, and several clubs. He shaded his eyes against the hot gold sun.

“Listen,” said Yuta, “either we walked long enough to find pizza, and we have no idea how far that could be, or we forgot about pizza and went to that McDonalds. So our best bet right now is probably to head to that McDonalds.”

Doyoung turned to him. “Our only lead is that we were going to get pizza, and you want to go to the McDonalds?”

“I’m just saying, if we’re trying to find a pizza place we don’t know whether to go left or right, but at least if we go towards—”

“Fine,” said Doyoung, turning on his heel and taking off in the direction of the McDonalds. He didn’t turn around to see whether Yuta was following. He was starting to get a little sick of how nice Yuta’s hair looked in the light.

They crossed the street to the McDonalds and ducked through the door warily. The only other people inside were a tall woman at the register and a few scattered diners along the window. Yuta and Doyoung looked at each other.

“Well?” said Yuta. “What’s your plan?”

“You’re the one who wanted to come here,” Doyoung hissed.

“No, actually, _you’re_ the one who dragged us all the way back to Oasis to find—”

“Can I help you?” said the woman at the register in English. She was chewing gum.

“Um.” Doyoung moved forward and cleared his throat. “We are…uh…” English sucked. What was the word for the night before today? “Yesterday…”

“We think we were here,” said Yuta, stepping closer to Doyoung. “And…were you here?”

The woman gave them an unimpressed look and chomped her gum. “I just got here two hours ago.”

“Oh,” said Yuta. Doyoung felt him press closer to his side, and tried to think of what he wanted to say.

“Do you want to order food or not?” said the lady.

Doyoung shook his head and said “No” and shuffled backwards just as Yuta was saying, “Yes,” and stepping forward. Their shoulders collided and Yuta swung sideways to avoid a crash, glancing at Doyoung. “Uh…Coke please,” he told the cashier.

“What size?” she said. Her gum snapped.

“Size?” Yuta repeated, face a blank.

“Large!” Doyoung quickly said.

“One forty nine.”

“Sorry,” said Yuta, “is there a person who was here last night?”

The lady swiped his card. “Sure there is. They’re not here now though.”

Yuta deflated, looking back at Doyoung almost apologetically. “Okay. Thank you,” he said.

Yuta got his soda and followed Doyoung towards the door, saying, “Look, I know that didn’t help much, but at least we can eliminate—”

“Hey,” said a voice. “Weren’t you two guys here last night?”

They stopped. Two kids were sitting by the window, a handful of chicken nuggets strewn across the table between them. One of them appeared to be asleep, with his head in his hand and his mouth lolling open. The other was pointing at Yuta and Doyoung with a half-eaten chicken nugget. It took Doyoung a second to realize that he had spoken in Korean.

“Um,” said Doyoung, glancing at Yuta, “maybe. We’re trying to figure out.”

The kid beckoned with the half nugget. “Come here. Yeah, I remember you. Jisung, do you remember these guys?”

They looked at the other boy, who snored.

“He remembers,” said the smaller boy. “You guys were here talking about pizza. Then you were talking about Michael Jackson. You were both blitzed.”

“Are you Korean?” said Yuta, frowning at the boy, whose left eyelid was twitching a little.

“Are you _okay?_ ” said Doyoung.

“No,” said the kid, “and no. I’m Chinese, but I live in Korea. And I’m fifteen hours into the three hundred nugget challenge. I think I’m about to go into cardiac arrest.”

“You’ve been here for _fifteen hours?_ ” said Doyoung, at the same time that Yuta said, “Three HUNDRED NUGGETS?”

“It’s a long story. Bottom line is, my brother won’t come pick us up until we can prove that we finished all of them between the two of us,” said the kid. He put a hand on the jumbo-sized soft drink in front of him and leaned forward. “The problem isn’t even the nuggets anymore. It’s the lack of sleep. It turns your stomach into a cement mixer.”

Yuta said, “Look, kid—”

“My name is Chenle, not kid.”

“If it’s that bad we can help you finish the nuggets.”

“No,” the boy sighed, shaking his head and gazing mournfully down at the nine nuggets left on the table, “no. You can’t. But thank you for offering.”

The boy across the table snorted and stirred. His eyes didn’t open. A second later his hand fell to the table, and his head dropped onto his elbow. He continued to snore.

“So what you’re saying,” Doyoung said, glancing back from the sleeping kid to the twitching one, “is that you were here last night when we were here?”

“Yeah,” said the boy, feeling for the straw in the mountainous Coke cup and missing. “Why? You can’t remember what you did?”

“Yeah,” said Yuta as the kid’s mouth finally found the straw.

“Mm,” said the kid, taking a long sip. “Ah. Uh huh. When you came in, you were fighting about pizza. I don’t know what you were saying but it was really loud. Everyone looked at you.”

Doyoung winced. “How long did we stay?” said Yuta.

“A while.” The boy gestured behind him with the chicken nugget. “You sat right there and ate some fries. After that you stopped fighting about the pizza.”

“Did you hear what else we talked about?” Doyoung asked.

Chenle narrowed one eye and looked away. “Uh…” He put a hand on his friend’s shoulder and whispered, “Jisung. Should I tell them?”

“Tell us what?” said Yuta as Jisung’s eyelids fluttered.

The boy lifted his hand off his friend and pouted out his lip apologetically at Doyoung and Yuta. “Sorry. He thinks I shouldn’t tell you.”

“He’s…asleep,” said Doyoung.

“He always says the same thing my conscience says,” said the boy, turning back to his nugget with a ponderous look on his face, “and my conscience says I shouldn’t tell you.”

Doyoung and Yuta exchanged glances. The kid nibbled on the edge of his chicken nugget and grimaced miserably.

“Kid, this is serious. We need to know,” said Doyoung.

“My name’s not kid!”

“Chenle. Buddy,” said Yuta, leaning down. “We’d really appreciate it if you’d tell us what you can. We need every clue we can get to figure out what happened last night.”

Chenle sighed and reached for a napkin, wiping his fingers delicately. “Okay. If you have to know. You,” he said, pointing at Doyoung, “got really mad and swore at him for a while.”

“What?” said Doyoung. “Why?”

“I don’t know what started it but at some point you yelled, ‘I fucking hate you, you fucking heterosexual.’ It was very tense.”

Yuta let out a breath and Doyoung folded his arms. “Well that’s—I was drunk. Did we say where we were going?”

“Mm.” The kid pointed back at Yuta. “You said to go with you to the Bellagio Fountains and that you had to tell him something. And he wanted you to just tell him now, and you said no, and you left arguing about that.”

Doyoung looked at Yuta, whose eyes were wide, and said, “Tell me what?”

Yuta opened his mouth and shook his head.

“That’s all I can remember,” said Chenle. “We were like ninety nuggets in at that point and life was not good.”

“Okay. No, you’ve been super helpful,” said Yuta. “Thanks a lot.”

“I hope you find out why he hated you for being heterosexual!” said Chenle, and then cocked his head, considering. “Well, I guess I just answered my own question…”

Yuta smiled, raising his hand for a high-five. “You’re a trooper, buddy. You can do this. We believe in you. Only nine nuggets left.”

Chenle regarded Yuta’s palm somberly and tapped it with the nugget. “Thank you, comrade.”

They got in the car to drive the ten minutes to the strip. Doyoung couldn’t stop thinking about what the McDonalds kid had said. “What did you want to tell me last night?” he asked again.

“I don’t remember,” said Yuta.

“Can’t you think of anything?”

Yuta twisted a strand of hair around his finger.

“Why did we have to go all the way to the Bellagio for it?” said Doyoung.

“If I remembered, I’d say, wouldn’t I?”

They had to park a few blocks away because there was no space on the strip. They joined the crowds thronging along the sidewalk outside the Bellagio, where the low sun glared off the glassy lake in front. The spring air smelled like water and cheap perfume. The fountains were off. Yuta seemed to have a destination in mind, fighting through the clusters of people along the edge of the lake so determinedly that it was hard for Doyoung to keep eyes on him.

“Yuta,” he muttered as Yuta’s ponytailed head bobbed in and out of sight. He raised his voice. “Yuta!”  
For a second he thought he’d really lost him, and then Yuta appeared, frowning at him. “What?”

“I couldn’t find you,” said Doyoung. He took a deep breath.

Yuta looked at him. Then his hand closed around Doyoung’s wrist. “Come on.”

Doyoung let Yuta pull him through the crowd and said, “Where are you trying to go?”

“Nowhere. I just want to see if there’s like a…” Yuta stopped in front of a low metal sign on the fence. “Here. Look. The fountains weren’t even _on_ when we came by last night.”

_FOUNTAINS AT THE BELLAGIO_ , read the sign in fancy silver script. Doyoung’s eyes skipped to the Saturday hours. _SAT NOON-8PM: SHOW EVERY 30 MIN, 8PM-MIDNIGHT: SHOW EVERY 15 MIN_.

“Fuck,” said Doyoung.

“What time do you think we were here? 3 in the morning?”

“If we were here at all,” said Doyoung.

Yuta pushed stray pieces of hair back off his face and sighed, letting his cheeks puff out. Doyoung suddenly pictured Yuta’s dimly-lit face leaning into his own on Jungwoo’s story. He yanked his wrist out of Yuta’s grip. Yuta threw him a sullen look.

“What do you suggest we do now?” Doyoung snapped.

“Go home and forget this ever happened.”

“Don’t start with the—”

“Find another fountain,” Yuta said, suddenly turning around and craning his neck to peer down the street, back in the direction they’d come. Doyoung stood on tiptoe to look where he was looking, but he only saw more hotels.

“Another fountain?”

Yuta said excitedly, “You know how I said I remembered looking for you on the street last night at some point? I think it was this street. Maybe. There’s this image in my mind.”

Doyoung’s eyebrows went up. “I had a text from you asking where I was.”

“What time?”

Doyoung pulled out his phone and Yuta peered over his shoulder to look at their chat. “ _doyo doyo wherefore art thou doyo,_ ” the last message read.

“ _3:17am_ ,” Yuta read the timestamp aloud. They looked at each other. “Fits the timeline,” said Yuta.

“You remember being on the main street?”

“Like, it was dark, but I think we were up that way. Or at least I was. I have this picture in my head of a side street off the strip.” Yuta had taken his wrist again and was already walking. “Maybe I lost you for a second and then found you again. Because we both ended up at your room later, so we couldn’t have been separated for that long.”

Doyoung had stopped listening for a second, because he was wondering what Yuta would do if he held Yuta’s hand properly. He looked up from Yuta’s hand on his wrist and said, “What? What about my room?”

“I mean—you were—I mean,” said Yuta, slowing down slightly, “I woke up in…your bed? I mean…”

Doyoung scoffed and looked away. “Yuta. I didn’t sleep in the bed. I woke up on the floor.”

Yuta looked confused. “On the floor?”

“On your shirt,” said Doyoung, “remember?”

Yuta, his mouth open, nodded as they emerged from the tight ring of people around the lake. He obviously didn’t remember. Doyoung rolled his eyes. Yuta said, “Well, at some point we were here. Or near here.”

“Fountain,” said Doyoung, “why did you say another fountain?”

“Because,” said Yuta. He was walking fast. “I wanted to find one.”

“ _Why_ , though?”

“Because the Bellagio Fountains weren’t on.”

“I mean why did you want a fountain in the first place?”

Yuta shrugged one shoulder roughly. “I just remember wanting to find one.”

As they crossed the street at a stoplight, Doyoung glanced up and down the block for anything he recognized. The enormous hotels around them arched and bowed under the weight of all their colored lights. No part of the glittering scene rang any bells. “You remember?”

“A little.”

“Why are we walking back to the car?”

“Because I feel like we should go in this direction,” said Yuta, giving him a look. “Do you have any better ideas?”

“Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“Can you just trust me?”

“Why would I trust you?”

“Sh—”

“You there!” boomed a voice to their left, so loudly that Doyoung and Yuta jumped together away from the sound. It was a squat, middle-aged street vendor, and he was shoving heart-shaped sunglasses that said “VEGAS LOVE” across the lenses onto Doyoung’s face. Doyoung, still vibrating from the volume of the man’s voice in his ear, ducked into Yuta’s shoulder, but was unable to escape the advance of the sunglasses. “You two look like you need some souvenirs from your Las Vegas honeymoon, well look no further!” the man bellowed. “Try these cheap novelties—high quality but low price!”

Doyoung patted at his face. The sunglasses seemed to have mysteriously latched onto his ears. Yuta’s mouth was hanging half-open, and the beaming man placed a plastic rose into it. Yuta’s jaw clamped down on the fake rose in surprise. “A vacation in Vegas is incomplete without a little fun! That’s what the F in Vegas stands for. Fun! Here, try this fountain crown. There’s no place in Vegas more romantic than the beautiful Bellagio Fountains.” A paper crown sporting silver jets of water was fixed onto Yuta’s head. “All the novelties are only two dollars. Buy three—see, these three that you’re trying out now, they suit you!—for only five dollars!”

Doyoung, who had finally managed to remove the sunglasses, held them out to the man and said, “No. No, thank you.”

The man looked deeply wounded. “You probably don’t realize, these are the highest quality souvenirs you will find at this price, and of course you’ll need a few trinkets to remember all the love and happiness you shared during your honeymoon—”

Yuta was shaking his head vigorously. Doyoung took the rose out of his mouth and Yuta said, “Sorry. We are not—this is not a honeymoon.”

“We are not married,” said Doyoung, pointing between them with the plastic rose.

The man’s eyes widened. He belly-laughed. “What do you mean! You were holding hands. You’ve got wedding rings!”

Doyoung shook his head quickly, holding his hands up—his ring was still in his pocket—and the man stopped for the briefest half-second, then shrugged. “Oh! My apologies, I suppose I saw the one ring and since you seem so close, well! You can’t deny you’d quite make a handsome couple! Anyway, love isn’t just for the lovers, is it? These souvenirs are just as special for dear friends as—”

He was speaking so fast that Doyoung couldn’t understand half of what he was saying. He tried to hand the rose and the sunglasses back. The man stopped and frowned at him. “Young man, that rose has been in your friend’s mouth. I’m sure you don’t expect me to take it back now,” he said.

Doyoung’s temper broke. Yuta saw it in his face and grabbed him just as he began to swear in Korean at the vendor. That was when a stranger stepped between them, taking the rose from Doyoung’s hand. “Allow me,” he said in Korean. He turned to the vendor and spoke in calm English.

Doyoung stopped struggling against Yuta’s grip and they both watched the man argue with the vendor. He spoke firmly, shaking his head at the vendor’s infuriated blustering. After a few back-and-forths, the vendor snatched the rose back, took the crown and the sunglasses, and bustled back to his stand with a sour look on his face. The stranger turned towards them with a smile and jerked his head down the sidewalk. Yuta pulled Doyoung away and Doyoung looked over his shoulder at the vendor, whose face had illuminated again as an older-looking couple wandered closer to his stand.

“Thank you,” Yuta said to the man after they’d made it several meters down the sidewalk and the danger of Doyoung going back to fight the vendor had diminished. “Why’d you help us?”

The man shrugged. “It’s nothing. I was nearby, I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation. When I heard Korean, I figured it was time to step in.”

“You’re Korean?” said Doyoung.

“No. I’m American, and my parents are Chinese. But I spent some time in Korea for school a while back.”

“We’re lucky you did,” said Yuta.

The man shook his head. “No problem. Those vendors can really get on your nerves.”

“What did you say to him?” Doyoung asked.

“Told him to stop taking advantage of foreigners,” said the man. “He said it wasn’t his fault you weren’t good at English. I asked him if he spoke more than two words of any language besides English and that was when he took back the souvenirs.”

“Your timing was impeccable,” said Yuta. “This one would have started throwing punches if you hadn’t stepped in.”

“Nuh uh,” said Doyoung.

The man aimed his warm smile at Doyoung. “Couldn’t blame you.”

“Do you live in Vegas?” Yuta said.

“Not really,” said the man, “I live out in the suburbs. My friends and I come into town a lot, though. Probably more than we should.”

“Ah,” said Yuta, “in that case, do you know this area at all? We’re looking for a fountain…”

The man’s smile turned quizzical. “Fountain? Buddy, you’re going in the wrong direction. The fountains are right over there.” He pointed back at the Bellagio.

“No,” said Yuta, “no, I mean a smaller fountain…in a park, maybe? Just one of those little rinky-dinky fountains, like, a waist-high one…”

“In a park?” the man repeated slowly. Then he turned around at the sound of a voice. A guy at the fringe of the crowd around the lake was waving at him and shouting, “Kun! Kun! It’s 5:29, the show’s about to start!”

The man’s face lit up. He looked at Yuta and Doyoung, feet starting to edge back to the lake. “If you’re looking for a park nearby, the closest one is probably Cedar Park. It’s just a block down that way and a block west. There might be a little pond or fountain there, I think.”

“That’s great,” said Doyoung, “thank you. Thanks for all your help.”

“Hey,” said the man, stopping for a moment, “just—out of curiosity, are you two really not a thing, or were you just saying that because of the vendor?”

Doyoung opened his mouth to say no, but Yuta was faster. “Why?”

The man paused. “Well you seem…”

“Kun!” the friend yelled from the edge of the crowd. “Come on!”

Kun’s smile dimpled, and he shrugged a little. “I mean, no reason. But you should stay for the show if you haven’t seen it yet. It really is the most romantic thing in Vegas.”

Doyoung and Yuta exchanged brief glances. With a wink, Kun turned and jogged back to the pool. “Thanks again,” called Yuta after him. He waved his hand over his head, and his friend pulled him into the crowd.

Doyoung shuffled his feet. “So Cedar Park, then.”

Yuta faced him and for a second he didn’t say anything. Then there was an enormous sound up the street, as if the lake had emitted a monstrous cough, and they turned to see the fountains lifting into the sky from dozens of points across the lake. A woman’s voice rose in a language that wasn’t English on the backs of orchestral strings. “Time to Say Goodbye.” Doyoung had always been annoyed with the English title of this song. The original was called “With You I’ll Go,” or “With You I’ll Leave,” and the English speakers had managed to turn that into “Time to Say Goodbye.” At least most of the original Italian in the song had remained intact for the duet version. For a few moments the fountains built slowly, and then they climbed like flowers into the setting sun’s rays.

Yuta was humming along. Doyoung looked at him. Yuta saw him out of the corner of his eye, swallowed and fell silent.

“You know this song?” said Doyoung.

Yuta said, “Why shouldn’t I?”

Doyoung shook his head, turning back to the fountains. They stood motionless beside each other until it was over.

“Your idea of the fountain we’re looking for was very specific when you described it to that guy,” said Doyoung as they walked down the street after the show ended.

“I told you,” said Yuta, “I have a picture of it in my head. I don’t remember much about them. I just feel like we went to one.”

“A rinky-dinky, waist-high one in a park,” said Doyoung.

“Sure. That’s as much as I remember.”

“So you really don’t remember why you wanted a—”

“Doyoung. Doyoung. There was no reason,” Yuta said. They made it to the end of the block and turned west. “I literally just wanted to see a fountain. I was drunk.”

“You proposed to me, didn’t you!” Doyoung blurted, and Yuta stopped in his tracks to gape at him. “You remember but you’re not telling me because—”

Yuta was shaking his head. “No. Doyoung—”

“—you know it was dumb and you think I’m going to get mad—”

“For Christ’s sake, Doyoung, I didn’t fucking propose to you.”

“Yes, you did, you thought it would be funny, so you left me somewhere on the street to go buy rings at some store,” said Doyoung, “and you wanted to find a romantic place, or something, but then my drunk ass had wandered off to who knows where, and then after you found me, we went to the park to see if there was a fountain and you proposed as a joke and I couldn’t say no and we got married. Oh my fucking god.”

Yuta groaned, walking away down the street again. “DOYOUNG! Can you chill and just listen to me for one fucking second. That’s not what happened. I didn’t want to find a fountain to propose to you as a joke. I just wanted…I just wanted to find a fountain!”

“Fuuuuck,” said Doyoung, following him with his hands in his hair.

“And what do you mean, you couldn’t say no? In what world would you ever say yes to a marriage proposal from _me?_ That can’t be what happened, none of that makes sense.”

Doyoung said, “Why is me saying yes the part that doesn’t make sense to you? I’m the gay one here—Yuta? Yuta, are you listening?”

Yuta’s eyes had left Doyoung’s, and his face had changed. He pointed over Doyoung’s shoulder. Doyoung turned around, peering up the street.

“Looks like a park,” said Yuta.

“Is that our car?”

“Yeah,” said Yuta. The baby-blue rental car gleamed in between a pair of sports cars on their side of the street, across from the stretch of dry yellowish-green along the sidewalk. Yuta beckoned to Doyoung and they cut a diagonal path across the street.

“Cedar Park,” Yuta read from the small sign at the base of a tree that stood on the corner of the square of green. It was small, deserted, and strewn with empty beer cans. Yuta stepped into the heavily weeded grass and ducked between some trees. For a moment, his white T-shirt was motionless through the leaves. Then, “Come here.”

Doyoung fought through the undergrowth and dodged some low-hanging branches to stand beside Yuta. Together they gazed at a little stone pool in the center of the clearing. There was a tower in the middle that might once have spouted water, but it wasn’t on, or else wasn’t functioning. The floor of the pond was carpeted in coins and dead leaves. Doyoung turned around. The street was barely visible through the bushes. On the other side of the clearing, a ribbon-like dirt path curved into the trees and disappeared.

“Do you recognize it?” Doyoung said.

Yuta was staring fixedly into the still water. After a moment he said, “I don’t know.”

Doyoung exhaled impatiently and sat down on the low wall around the fountain. “Everything was dark last night,” said Yuta.

“Great,” said Doyoung.

“Don’t get pissed at me. You remember less than I do.”

“I’m not pissed at you.” Doyoung kicked an empty beer can and it skittered into the bushes. “I’m pissed there’s nothing here. It’s just an empty fucking park.”

Yuta didn’t answer. Doyoung looked over his shoulder. Yuta was tearing a leaf off of a tree.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Cleaning up the trash you kicked,” Yuta said. He knelt and wrapped the leaf around the beer can, then went looking for a recycling bin. Doyoung rolled his eyes and followed him out of the bushes.

“Maybe if we just walk around,” said Yuta, tossing the can into a bin on the sidewalk, “we can see if there’s something we dropped that might help us. Like a receipt with our names on it or something that could give us another lead.”

“Yeah right. Your tree-hugger ass wouldn’t let a single scrap of paper fall on the ground no matter how smashed you were,” said Doyoung.

Yuta, eyes on the ground, had found the little dirt path and was picking his way back to the fountain. “Well sorry I want to keep the planet alive for your children.”

“Sorry my priority right now is getting our civil status back to what it should be!” Doyoung said, batting at a branch that had snagged on his shirt.

Yuta knelt at the edge of the fountain and peered into it again. “Look, I can’t manage to understand why it’s such a big deal if we’re married in a country we don’t even live in—”

“Does being LEGAL HUSBANDS literally mean nothing to you?” said Doyoung. “Who cares if it’s in our country or not! Your straight ass is literally married to a _man_ right now.” 

Yuta looked up sharply. “I never said I was straight ass! I mean—I never said I was straight! _You_ guys started saying I was straight because I always date girls!”

“Wh…” Doyoung stared at him. “Are you serious? You’ve said the words ‘no homo’ to me like sixteen times in the last year!”

Yuta scoffed. “If I ever said no homo, which I think I said, like, once, it was for your benefit, not mine.”

“ _Once?_ You’ve got to be fucking kidding m—what do you mean, for _my_ benefit?”

“You know exactly what I mean! You barely tolerate my presence when it’s just the two of us. You’d knock my teeth out if you ever thought I was coming onto you.” Yuta got to his feet. “So, like, just to make it clear that I’m _not_...”

“What? What are you talking about?” Doyoung’s brain was suddenly fizzing out. “I don’t barely tolerate… You’re the one who always tries to get on my nerves!”

“See? Exactly, you practically hate me, so it makes NO sense that we got married last night, because, let’s be honest, you would never marry me in a million years, not sober, drunk, upside-down or sideways, and this whole mission to find where we got married is just a wild goose chase with no goose.” Yuta turned on his heel and stalked away around the side of the pool.

Doyoung circled the opposite way around the pool, meeting him on the other side, and said, “No, no, no. Hang on. Number one, this bullshit that I hate you, fucking stuff it. And number two—”

Yuta laughed. “Shut up.”

“You shut up!”

“Please! You even said it at the McDonalds. You don’t actually like me as a person.”

“Of course I fucking do!” Doyoung wanted to smack him. “Whatever I said at the McDonalds, I was—I was drunk! I think you’re fucking amazing!”

The bitter smile fell off Yuta’s face and he said, “Amazing?”

“See, this is why I want a divorce,” said Doyoung. “You’re a fucking dipshit. You never pay attention to anything.”

“I thought the word was annulment,” Yuta said as he spoke, and then, “ _I_ never pay attention to anything? You’re the one who, who, hyperfixates on all the wrong things and can’t ever let anything go! You think you know everything but you don’t!”

His dark expression turned to shimmering surprise as Doyoung placed his hands on his chest and shoved him backwards into the pool. He landed heavily in the few inches of water. There was a splash, and then silence. Yuta gaped up at Doyoung, his jaw slack.

Doyoung put his hands on his knees. “I can’t let anything go, huh? How’s that for not letting anything go?”

Yuta lunged at him, grabbed his forearm and yanked Doyoung in on top of him. More splashing. Doyoung’s hands found the fountain floor on either side of Yuta and he pushed himself up.

“You fucking imbecile,” he growled as he straightened one arm and dug his other hand into his back pocket.

Yuta was a dripping mess. “Are you actually calling _me_ —?”

“You’re so lucky my phone case is waterproof,” said Doyoung, tossing his phone into the grass.

“Yeah, and you’re lucky I left my phone in the car. What the fuck is your problem?”

“Fuck you.”

“I knew I should have stayed at home,” Yuta said to the sky. “I could be sleeping right now, but instead, I’m lying in a pool of old leaf water with a conceited brat on top of me...”

“If you want to go home so bad, then think of a way to help me figure out what happened after we left this place!” said Doyoung.

“Fine,” said Yuta, “if we kiss again, maybe it’ll jog our memories of last night.”

“Fine,” said Doyoung.

Yuta raised himself onto one elbow and Doyoung met his lips halfway. Suddenly there was only him. There was only the taste of him. They struggled to get closer. Yuta sat halfway up and Doyoung fell sideways into the water, but was caught by Yuta’s arm on his back. Yuta’s mouth was hot and his fingers were cold in Doyoung’s hair. They couldn’t pull each other closer without sitting up properly, but they couldn’t sit up properly without letting each other go. Instead they reeled to the left with a splash. Someone stuck out the heel of one hand to catch them. Doyoung followed the pressure of Yuta’s hand on his waist and then found himself in Yuta’s lap. Their mouths separated. They looked at each other.

“Do you remember anything?” Yuta whispered.

“No.”

“Me neither.”

A second passed and Doyoung said, “Maybe we should…”

“Try again, yeah.”

They rose out of the water as they kissed this time, Yuta taking Doyoung’s hand to help him balance, Doyoung holding him steady when the back of his legs hit the wall of the pool. Yuta lifted one foot out of the water, placed it in the grass, and straddled the wall, pulling Doyoung down onto it with him. His clothes were soaked through—Doyoung was only half wet. A breeze passed and Yuta shivered in his arms. Doyoung shifted his body into the wind to block it, wrapping his arms tighter around Yuta’s back. Yuta’s thumb traced two cold circles at the base of Doyoung’s neck. Doyoung felt for his hand and brought it down, clasping it at their sides, squeezing warmth into it. Yuta let Doyoung’s fingers knead his hand. Then he pulled it away and placed it on the wall, leaning Doyoung back and kissing him harder and slower.

Suddenly a voice from the street, sharp and close, shouted, “Stop!” and they jumped apart. A second later, three or four people passed by on the sidewalk, one of them continuing to rebuke another in fast, tangled English. They were little more than indistinguishable shapes through the leaves. Doyoung watched the shapes disappear down the street as the voices faded. When he turned back, Yuta was looking at him like a deer in headlights.

“I think they’re gone,” said Doyoung.

“I’m not straight,” said Yuta.

Doyoung went to say something but he didn’t seem to have enough air.

“That’s what I wanted to tell you last night,” said Yuta, “that I’m not straight.”

“Then why do you always say no homo!” Doyoung said.

“Because! You make me nervous!”

Nervous? “What? Why?”

Yuta’s eyes flicked back and forth between Doyoung’s as he stuttered, “You—you—you’re so pretty and smart, and you always roll your eyes at me and avoid me, and the only reason you stay friends with me is because of Johnny and Jaeh—”

Doyoung stood up. “Yuta, I don’t only stay friends with… _what?_ No! I just roll my eyes at you because you annoy me!”

Yuta, who had also risen from the wall, blinked and stepped back. Doyoung groaned. “No—you don’t annoy me—I mean it’s—”

Yuta’s gaze turned to the ground. Doyoung let out a gasp of frustration and said, “You annoy me because you make me want you! And it’s fucking annoying! Okay? I don’t not like you! Do you understand that? Can you stop saying I don’t like you? I like you as a person and I like the way you look and the way you are, I like it so much sometimes it’s hard to be around you and always be reminded how _straight_ you are, that’s all that—”

Yuta squeaked out, “But I’m not straight!”

“Yeah well! I didn’t know that!”

Yuta looked dazed. “It’s hard to be around me…?”

“Yuta!” Doyoung took his shoulders and shook him. “Yuta. I like you. Like, that way. Okay? I get annoyed and shit because I _like_ you.”

The uncertainty in Yuta’s eyes dissipated, replaced by something that shone. Even as the spark of a smile drew across his lips, he tilted his face in mock-suspicion and said, “Really?”

Doyoung threw his hands up. “What do you want me to do? Prove it?”

“Yes,” said Yuta, his grin wide now, hugging his arms to him.

“Fine! Fuck!” Doyoung turned around and fought through the shrubbery to the street, screaming into the neon-spangled sunset, “I LIKE NAKAMOTO YUTA!”

Yuta stumbled after him, uttering a confused string of incoherent syllables, while several strangers down the street turned to stare. “I FUCKING LIKE HIM. NAKAMOTO YUTA! I LIKE HIM,” Doyoung yelled, and a few people covered their mouths to laugh. Yuta’s hand closed around Doyoung’s wrist and yanked him back behind a tree.

“Was that fucking sufficient?” said Doyoung, pinned flat against the tree trunk, blood rushing in his ears.

Yuta was giggling. “I just meant for you to, like, kiss me again,” he whispered.

“Then just say that next time,” said Doyoung, and caught Yuta’s smile in his lips.

Doyoung’s phone went off several times in the grass. An evening chill had descended on the shadowed park, and noise from the street was growing. Yuta was cold—Doyoung knew it from the goosebumps on his arms and the way his mouth trembled against Doyoung’s when there was wind. Finally a call came into Doyoung’s phone and they could only ignore the chiming for so long before Yuta unsealed their lips to say, “What if I stomped on your phone until it broke.”

“You don’t have the money to replace it.”

“You don’t really need a phone.”

“Fine, let me stomp on your phone and break it.”

“My phone’s in the car.”

“So let’s go get it. We have to go home soon anyways.”

Yuta frowned beautifully. “Why?”

“You have to change your clothes or you’re going to get sick,” said Doyoung.

“What? No I’m not.”

“You’re cold.”

“No I’m not.”

“Yes you are. _I’m_ cold, and you’re twice as wet as me.”

Yuta’s eyebrows slanted up and he said, “You’re cold?”

“Not that cold. But you’re really cold, I can feel your goosebumps.”

“Being cold doesn’t make you sick,” Yuta grumbled.

“It lowers your immune system’s ability to fight—”

“Sure, but it doesn’t actually get you sick. How long is your phone going to go off?” said Yuta, stepping away from him to fix a hostile stare on the bright screen in the grass. Doyoung went around him.

“Someone must have called me twice,” he said, and bent to pick it up. Johnny’s contact name was all over the home screen. He stood.

“What time is it?” said Yuta.

“6:45,” Doyoung told him.

“Oh my god.”

“Come on,” said Doyoung, beckoning. Yuta followed him out of the park and across the street to the car. In the purple dusk glow of the neon lights, Yuta’s lips were red and shiny. Doyoung suddenly wondered for a second if he was dreaming. Yuta met his eyes and his mouth quirked. Doyoung looked down at his phone, trying not to blush.

“Johnny wants to know why we’re not answering our phones,” he said as they got into the car. His thumbs paused over the keyboard. “Do we tell him we were making out?”

Yuta didn’t say anything. He had picked up his phone but he wasn’t looking at it. He was smiling, but barely, like a kid with a secret piece of stolen candy in his pocket. He put his hand on his lips. Then he noticed Doyoung watching him and said, “What? Uh. Should we?”

“Um…should we not?”

“I’m—” Yuta hesitated, then pointed to his chest and said, “ _I_ don’t mind if you don’t—”

“Oh, I don’t. I mean, you don’t mind the guys knowing about…?”

“No. No, no.” Yuta cleared his throat. “Go ahead.”

Doyoung sent a message and watched another one come in. He clicked his tongue.

“What did you say?”

“He asked ‘ _why aren’t you guys picking up’_ and I just said ‘ _we were making out_ ,’ but all he said was ‘ _ha ha, when are you coming back._ ’”

Yuta was typing too. “Like, he thought you were joking?”

“I think, yeah.”

Yuta said, “I guess I would too if I were him.” Then, a second later, “Oh, damn it, I forgot.”

“What?” Doyoung said “Forgot what?”

Yuta rubbed one eye. “About the…rings thing. Hyuck’s in my inbox asking if we found out whether we’re married.”

Doyoung faltered. He had forgotten about the rings too. Suddenly it didn’t seem to matter as much as it did an hour ago. It was Vegas, after all. What was the thing people kept saying about the city?

“Well maybe, like,” Doyoung said slowly, and switched to English, “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, or whatever?”

Yuta’s little smile came back. He said, “You don’t mind not knowing?”

Doyoung shrugged. “Oh…not really. It’s not that important, I guess.”

“Right. No, yeah. I agree.”

“So should we just go back and, like, change our clothes?” Doyoung said, facing front and reaching into his pocket for the car keys.

“Sure.”

“Fuck.” Doyoung looked around. “Yuta. Do you have the keys?”

“Huh? The car keys? No…”

“Fucking fuck!” said Doyoung, checking his back pockets again and finding only unfamiliar U.S. coins. He twisted around in his seat.

“You can’t find the car keys?” said Yuta.

“No. Help me look for them.”

“How did you open the car? Did you leave it unlocked?”

“I don’t know. I guess. Shit.” Doyoung opened the car door and got out so he could see the floor better. Underneath the driver’s seat, a shiny piece of plastic caught the light.

“Oh, they’re here. The keys are right here, Doyoung, I found them.”

“Yuta,” said Doyoung, drawing the plastic out from under the seat.

“What?”

Doyoung climbed back into the car and handed the plastic to Yuta. It was a small square transparent bag that was torn open at the top. Along the bottom, a cartoon of a woman was making a shocked face next to a picture of two rings. “ _FAKE WEDDING RINGS!_ ” read the pink and gold letters.

“Oh my fucking god,” said Yuta.

“ _Create your own fake wedding_ ,” Doyoung read off the subscript. “ _Perfect for pranking family and friends_.”

“ _Interior inscription: Now Our Love Is Forever!”_ Yuta looked up into Doyoung’s face, his mouth wide open. “Doyoung!”

“JOHNNY,” said Doyoung.

“JOHNNY!” he said again fifteen minutes later, this time reaching for Johnny’s neck, after throwing open the door to the house and finding Johnny combing his hair in front of the mirror in the foyer.

“WHAT?” Johnny howled in indignation as Doyoung’s hands closed around his throat, but he was grinning. Yuta wrestled Doyoung off him. “Doyoung, don’t kill Johnny, it’ll ruin Jaehyun’s bachelor party.”

“JAEHYUN!” Doyoung released Johnny and went further into the house. “HE HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH THIS TOO...”

“Something to do with what?” Johnny said as he and Yuta followed Doyoung, keeping his voice innocent even as his face was anything but.

“Where is he. YOU!” Doyoung said, finally rounding the corner into the kitchen to find Jaehyun gnawing at a chicken wing at the counter. Jaehyun raised his eyebrows and took a step backwards, wiping at his mouth. Mark said next to him, “Why are you, like, damp?”

“We’re mostly dry,” said Yuta.

Doyoung withdrew the plastic ring bag from his pocket and threw it in Jaehyun’s face. “Did you come up with this? Huh?”

“It was Johnny’s idea,” said Jaehyun, still chewing, pointing over Doyoung’s shoulder.

“WHAT was Johnny’s idea?” said Taeyong, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor with Hyuck putting tiny clips in his hair.

“Wow, way to sell me out,” said Johnny as Doyoung rounded on him.

“Tae, you’re back!” said Yuta.

“I just got in like a minute ago. Babe, when I tell you about the day I just had, you’re going to flip. What’s going on? Your clothes look muddy,” said Taeyong, watching Doyoung attack Johnny on the other side of the kitchen.

“Hey, did you guys ever get divorced?” said Lucas, coming into the room with Jungwoo and Sicheng on his heels.

Taeyong said, “Divorced?” and Taeil, sitting at the table over another bowl of cereal, said, “Is anyone going to get Doyoung off Johnny?”

Jaehyun and Mark, who were closest to Doyoung and Johnny, pointed at each other with their chicken wings and shook their heads. Yuta sat down on the ground, which someone had cleaned up at some point in the evening, and started to tell Taeyong about the rings. Lucas bent down and lifted Doyoung off Johnny like he was a rag doll.

“Wait, you’re telling me you guys just spent _all afternoon_ trying to find the church where you got married?” said Taeyong, reaching a hand up to touch his hair only to have it slapped away by Hyuck.

“Yeah, neither of us could remember getting home last night or anything,” said Yuta.

Taeyong stood up. Hyuck squealed in displeasure at the interruption. “Why didn’t you message me? I could have told you when you got home,” said Taeyong.

“What?” said Doyoung, still struggling against Lucas’s unyielding grip.

“I found you two lying on the grass outside at like 4 in the morning!” said Taeyong. “And I made you come inside, and you both went to Doyoung’s room and fell asleep!”

“Are you kidding me?” said Yuta, exchanging glances with Doyoung.

“ _You_ were home last night?” said Sicheng.

“What were they doing lying on the grass?” said Jaehyun.

“Shh! Everyone shush. Listen,” said Taeyong, allowing Hyuck to yank him back down so he could finish his hair. “I got home late last night, and when I got up again to go to the Montecarlo penthouse with my temporary sugar daddy, you were all asleep.”

Hyuck paused and said, “Oh, shit, you went to the Montecarlo penthouse?”

Taeyong grinned up at him. “They had a champagne fountain and a timber wolf.”

“A _timber_ _wolf?_ ” said Mark and Taeil simultaneously.

Jungwoo, sharing a disgusted look with Sicheng across the room, said, “Can’t rich people ever just buy dogs and cats instead of keeping wild animals that aren’t meant to be domesticated—”

Taeyong pouted and protested, “He was hit by a car when he was a baby and they couldn’t return him to the wild!”

“Back up,” said Yuta, “what were Doyoung and I doing in the grass?”

Lucas released Doyoung, who went closer to Taeyong and Yuta. “You said you were stargazing,” said Taeyong.

“You can’t see stars at night in Vegas,” said Johnny.

Taeyong nodded. “I know. They were trashed. I think they were watching the searchlights from the Bellini. After I brought them inside, Doyoung told Yuta he could have the bed and they both went into Doyoung’s room. I guess maybe they forgot Yuta had a room of his own. Then a few minutes later I saw Yuta in the kitchen, and when I asked him what he was doing, he said he was getting a glass of water, but then he didn’t drink it. He just took it back to Doyoung’s room.”

Doyoung folded his knees and sat down in the empty space next to Yuta. “That’s it?”

“So you’re not married?” said Mark through a mouthful of chicken.

“No!” said Doyoung, spinning around. Yuta gripped his arm so he wouldn’t get up and start swinging at Johnny again. “Johnny bought fake rings to put on us when we were passed out!”

“Hey,” said Johnny. He hadn’t stopped laughing since they’d walked in. “Hey. It wasn’t me who bought the rings, all right? Jaehyun saw them in a convenience store while he was waiting for me to pick him up and sent me a picture, so I told him we should get them. He bought them, not me.”

“I wish Ten were here,” said Jaehyun rather mournfully, “he would think this was so funny.”

“So you didn’t actually get married? That’s disappointing,” said Hyuck over Jaehyun.

“Johnny, were you driving drunk?” Yuta demanded. Hyuck shifted his chair so he could start to braid Yuta’s hair.

“No! Jesus. Chill. I was sober since midnight. I spent like an hour rounding up all you assholes.”

“Oh, well,” said Yuta, “in that case, thanks.”

“ _Yuta!_ ” said Doyoung. “What do you mean, _thanks?_ Are you not mad?”

“Me? Not really,” said Yuta.

“Ha!” Hyuck barked.

“What—?” Doyoung stood up and Yuta’s round eyes followed him. “These asscanoes just wasted half our second day in Vegas!”

“I mean, I wouldn’t call it a waste,” said Yuta, one corner of his mouth tugging up.

“Y—” Doyoung cut himself off. Yuta looked away, trying not to smile. Doyoung sat back down. Taeil said, “Hang on, what?”

Jungwoo piped, “Yeah, why wasn’t it a waste?”

Doyoung snuck a glance at Yuta, who choked out a single laugh and covered his mouth. Doyoung could feel his face flushing again. Taeyong pointed between them and said, “Wait, what’s…?”

“What’s what?” muttered Doyoung, playing with the ring.

“What’s,” said Taeyong, “going on here? Did something happen? Yuta, did something happen?”

“Uh…” Yuta was pink too. Everybody else was quiet. A strand of hair fell out of his braid into his eyes. “I guess?”

“Yuta!” said Doyoung.

“ _What?_ You said we could tell them!”

“Yeah, but they’re going to—”

“TELL US WHAT?” Jungwoo shrieked over the sudden clamor while Taeyong tried to shush everyone.

“They’re going to what?” said Yuta.

“What happened?” Hyuck demanded.

“They’re going to—!” Doyoung closed his eyes for a second. “OKAY! Everyone fucking listen. Yuta told me I think I know everything but I don’t and I pushed him in a fountain and we hooked up. End of story.”

The noise level in the kitchen rose several decibels as Yuta leapt to his feet. “End of story? You told me you liked me!”

“ _You_ kissed me!” said Doyoung, standing up with him.

“Nuh uh! You kissed me!”

“You said we should kiss!”

“You said we should kiss again!”

“Well we should!” said Doyoung.

Yuta wavered. “A—now?”

“Okay,” said Doyoung.

Yuta gave Doyoung a blinking frown and then a grin broke across his face. “All right,” he said, “sure,” and he took Doyoung’s hand to pull him out of the kitchen and down the hall. The others trailed them, still screeching “what the fuck”s and “get back here”s. Doyoung yanked Yuta into his own room, which was closest, and Yuta threw the door shut in Johnny and Jungwoo’s faces. The boys continued to protest outside. It didn’t seem to matter, because Yuta was kissing him against the door, and the immediacy of him drowned their voices out.

The voices had been gone for a minute or two at least when there was a loud thud on the other side of the door. Yuta let go of one of Doyoung’s hands and thumped the door back. “Leave us alone!”

“Dinner in a half hour!” said Johnny.

“See you in a half hour then,” Yuta shouted. Johnny said something to Jaehyun, his voice fading down the hall. Yuta’s eyes focused on Doyoung’s face. He had their hands pressed palm-to-palm against the door on either side of Doyoung’s head, fingers threaded.

“Yuta, are you still cold?” he said.

“No,” Yuta said. “Are you?”

“No. Yuta.”

“What?”

“Did you ever kiss a boy before?”

Yuta bit his lip and then he shook his head a little. Doyoung grinned.

“Why are you smiling,” Yuta said.

“Feel kind of special.”

“Shut up.”

“Shut me up.”

After dinner they all went out to a casino. Doyoung, who didn’t feel like drinking a drop, had volunteered to be the designated driver. He waited for the weariness that inevitably resulted from being the only sober one at the party, but it didn’t come for hours. In fact, he didn’t feel an ounce of regret that he wasn’t drinking until well past midnight, when he stood alone next to a blackjack table watching Lucas and Sicheng lose hundreds of dollars.

He put his elbow on the back of Lucas’s chair and scanned the room. It was hard to see through the dimly-lit crowd. Where was everybody? Where was Yuta? He hadn’t seen him since the slot machines a half hour ago. Next to him, Lucas let out a cry of dismay as he lost another twenty bucks. Doyoung eyed Lucas’s whiskey.

“You better not,” said Johnny’s voice behind him.

Doyoung turned around. “Better not what?”

“You’re looking at Lucas’s rum like you’re about to die of thirst,” said Johnny, peering over Lucas’s shoulder at the game. “You better stay sober, I was sober last night and I’m not doing it again.”

“It’s not rum, it’s whiskey,” said Doyoung.

“Even worse.”

“I’m bored.”

“Not my fault,” said Johnny.

Doyoung leaned against the back of Lucas’s chair, saying, “Can we go find something to do that doesn’t involve getting poorer?” and then he saw Yuta’s face over the tables. It bobbed between Jungwoo and Jaehyun’s, mouth moving, eyes combing the room. They were walking towards the bar. His gaze darted over the crowd and stopped when it met Doyoung’s.

“Like what?” said Johnny.

Yuta had broken off midsentence. He beckoned to the other two, and they changed direction.

“I don’t know,” said Doyoung to Johnny.

Johnny pointed. “Hey, it’s the guys.”

“Did they win anything?” Yuta asked, nodding at Lucas and Sicheng as he shouldered through the throng.

“What do you think?” said Doyoung.

“I would think not,” said Yuta.

“You’d be right,” said Doyoung.

Johnny asked, “Where are Mark and Hyuck?”

“Fine,” said Jaehyun, “they’re with Taeil and Taeyong.”

“Can we go find a table and sit down?” said Doyoung, looking at the half-empty vodka soda in Yuta’s hand.

“Huh? Sure,” said Yuta. They picked their way through the crowd to a vacant table. Jungwoo, pulling Johnny and Jaehyun to the bar, pointed at Yuta and said, “Shots!”

“Pass,” said Yuta as he sat down next to Doyoung.

“No margarita either?” said Doyoung.

Yuta glanced between his glass and Doyoung. “Hm? Should I have a margarita?”

“No,” said Doyoung, “it just seems like such a downgrade from the margaritas last night to a vodka soda.”

“What vodka soda?”

“Isn’t that what you have?”

“This?” Yuta held the glass out to him. Doyoung took it and sipped.

“It tastes like watered-down Sprite,” he said.

“It is.”

“It is?”

“It’s just soda and ice.”

Blue light from the TV screens above the bar painted one side of Yuta’s face. Doyoung handed the sweating glass back to him. “You’re not drinking?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Why?”

He shrugged, sipping from the little red straw. “Keep you company.”

“Where’d you go that whole time after the slot machines?” said Doyoung.

“Me? I was looking for you, where’d _you_ go that whole time?”

“I didn’t go anywhere. I just stayed where you found me.”

“So watching Lucas and Sicheng go broke was more fun than hanging out with me?” said Yuta with a trace of a pout, stirring the soda with his straw.

Doyoung tried not to smile. That sounded like the Yuta he was used to. “You missed me that much? It was only like a half hour.”

Yuta sulked. “Didn’t seem like a half hour.”

After a few moments Doyoung said, “I thought it would be better if I stayed in one spot. To make sure we didn’t both end up going in circles.”

A grin eased onto Yuta’s face. “But what if I thought the same thing and was sitting around waiting for you to find me?”

“In what world would you ever sit around and wait for anything?”

“Hm.” Yuta crunched on a piece of ice and then the other three came back from the bar. They watched the boys take their shots, groan, complain, and fight over the remainder of Johnny’s beer to use as a chaser. Then the boys conducted another interrogation of Yuta and Doyoung, though they’d already done one at dinner, and this one was drunker and more halfhearted.

“Ten would love this,” said Jaehyun with his head in his head. “I wish he were here to see…”

“So just so I can like,” interrupted Jungwoo, “get this worked out in my head, uh, you guys went to the park after the Bellagio and started yelling at each other and pushed each other in the fountain, and _that_ was when you kissed?”

“We weren’t really yelling,” said Doyoung, “but yes.”

“We were yelling,” said Yuta.

“I don’t understand why it took you so long to kiss if you knew you had already kissed the night before,” said Jaehyun.

“There was no chance. Doyoung was super pissed all day,” said Yuta.

“You say that like I had no reason to be pissed,” said Doyoung.

Yuta scowled. “You woke up married to a boy you wanted to kiss, how is that a reason to be pissed?”

“Yeah, I woke up married to a boy I wanted to kiss WHO I THOUGHT WAS STRAIGHT! I felt like the universe was messing with me.”

“Yo,” said Johnny, a grin coming over his face, “two things. Number one, Yuta, sorry we all thought you were straight.”

“It’s okay,” said Yuta. “I thought I was straight for a while there.”

“Glad you finally saw the light,” said Jungwoo, pulling out his phone.

“But aren’t you glad,” continued Johnny, “that Jaehyun and I masterminded this ingenious plan to clear the air and make it possible for the kissing in question to take place?”

Doyoung stood up, threatening to smack him. Jungwoo piped up, “Hey, yeah! You owe me for that too! If I hadn’t gotten you two kissing on video last night, you would never have—”

“Pranking your friends and filming them doing out-of-character things after you got them drunk are not feats to be proud of!” Doyoung roared. A few people at a nearby table turned to look at them. Yuta put a hand on him and ran his thumb over the back of his wrist.

“I did not get you drunk,” said Jungwoo smoothly, “you took all those Jello shots of your own volition. You are an adult. I did not force your hand. You could have dropped out of the game at any time.”

“And endured you and Sicheng’s pestering for the next three hours? No thanks,” said Doyoung. He sat down and Yuta released him.

“Anyway,” said Jaehyun, “yeah, we’re still taking the credit for all this, so.”

“Yeah,” said Johnny. “In fact, I think you owe us all some thanks.”

Doyoung swung at him and hit his shoulder. Johnny leapt out of the chair, holding his shoulder and cackling. “Congratulations to you both for being gay. Now let’s go.”

Doyoung watched Jaehyun get up. “Where?”

“To find something to do,” said Johnny. “Like you said.”

Doyoung said, “Like what?”

Jungwoo stood up too, rubbed Yuta’s shoulders and said, “Another drink.”

“I don’t know. Something. Didn’t you say you were bored?” Johnny said.

“I’m not bored,” said Doyoung.

Johnny looked between him and Yuta and said, “Ahh,” and Jungwoo pulled on his sleeve. “Guys, let’s go talk to the hot bartender some more.”

Jaehyun said, “That hot bartender wasn’t as hot as Ten. Ah! If Ten were here…”

“Okay, okay, groom-to-be, relax,” said Johnny, putting an arm around his shoulder, and the three of them disappeared in the direction of the bar again.

Yuta’s glass was empty except for ice now. He breathed into it to make it melt faster. The glass fogged.

“I’m sorry,” said Doyoung.

“What?”

“Sorry I assumed you were straight.”

Yuta smiled into his glass. The blue TV lights shimmered over his face, as if they were underwater. “You guys don’t have to keep saying that. I uh…I did say ‘no homo’ a lot.”

“Don’t ever say it again,” said Doyoung. “Even just to quote your past self.”

“Okay. It’s only ‘no hetero’ from here on out.”

Yuta met Doyoung’s eyes. His smile was all soft and Doyoung could feel the small space between them, like the gap of a door standing ajar.

“I’m sorry for calling you a conceited brat and saying you think you know everything,” Yuta said.

Doyoung cleared his throat. “Well, I am, and I do, so don’t worry about it.”

“Why’d you feel like the universe was messing with you?”

“Huh? Today?”

“Mm.”

“Why do you think?” Doyoung said.

“You like me?”

“Wow, you remember all the way from this afternoon.”

“And I make you want me.”

“Yes, Yuta, it’s been established that I’m attracted to you.”

Yuta rapped his pointer finger on the edge of the table. “Yeah. I want to hear more about that.”

Doyoung could feel himself getting redder. “Why?”

“Because I’m a narcissist.”

Doyoung kicked the leg of Yuta’s chair, which only made Yuta’s grin wider. Doyoung rolled his eyes.

“Aha!” said Yuta. “The eye roll that means you’re annoyed with me which means you want me.”

Doyoung said, “I’ve already done a whole confession and everything, why don’t you tell me about your—I mean, if you—the way you…”

Yuta’s smile softened a little more. Doyoung shrugged and said, “What you think about me.”

“Me?”

“Yeah…”

“You’re like…” Yuta’s eyes traveled up and down him, slowly enough to make Doyoung’s breath falter. “I never thought I’d…” He cleared his throat. “Y’know. Mm. You’re, yeah.”

“Yuta, you just said literally nothing.” Yuta started to protest and Doyoung asked, “You never thought you’d what?”

“Like…” Yuta gestured vaguely. He looked down at his glass. “Have a chance.”

Doyoung suddenly felt indignant. “A chance? Yuta, no one comes close to you.”

Something bright, almost twinkling, passed over Yuta’s face. Doyoung wasn’t sure if it was a light from the screens. Yuta leaned closer and grabbed Doyoung’s hand.

“Let’s go,” said Yuta.

“But I’m the designated driver,” said Doyoung weakly.

“Not home. Just outside.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?” Yuta said in a boorish voice, mimicking Doyoung. “I want to kiss you. Or are you just going to sit on your ass like when Johnny said let’s go?”

Doyoung rolled his eyes. “I’ll go. I’ll go.”

Yuta smiled. “With me, you’ll go. Because you like me. Because you’re attracted to me.”

“Or maybe I’m just curious where you’re planning on kissing me,” said Doyoung, already standing up and following Yuta past the bar.

Yuta looked at him over his shoulder. “Parking lot, sidewalk. Does it matter?”

He was right. It didn’t.

They didn’t get far, though, because the moment they stepped through the shiny gold doors of the casino, they heard a voice shouting Yuta’s name. Both of them turned their heads. The voice’s apparent owner was beaming at them from the sidewalk and vigorously waving his hand over his head. While they stared at him, he gave a little jump into the air, as if out of pure joy. His friends’ expressions mirrored Yuta and Doyoung’s.

“You know that guy?” said Doyoung out of the corner of his mouth.

“Uhhh,” said Yuta.

“Yuta, that’s you, isn’t it?” said the person, jogging closer to them while his friends followed at a distance. His hair was a startling shade of pink, and though he’d appeared tall from further away, he looked distinctly younger under the bright lights from the casino.

Yuta, evidently still confused, recovered with, “Ha…yep! It’s me! What’s up, man?”

The boy’s wide grin widened even further. He clapped Yuta on the back. “This is so crazy! What are the odds we’d see each other two nights in a row?”

“Jaemin, you know this guy?” said one of the boys standing behind him.

He said brightly, “No! We just happened to run into each other last night and started talking because we both know Korean. He gave me his extra fries from McDonalds!” He turned back to Yuta. “So did you work things out with that boy?”

Yuta seemed to enter into a state of sudden panic. “HAHA! Jaeminnn! Can’t believe I…you’re here! What are you doing here?”

Jaemin cocked his head. “What am I doing here? I don’t know! Vegasing! What are you doing here?”

“Wait, wait,” said Doyoung, “sorry to interrupt, who’s that boy you mentioned?”

Jaemin said, “The boy? Ah, are you Yuta’s friend?”

“Yeah,” said Doyoung. “He was looking for a fountain last night, right? He was trying to take a boy to a fountain because the Bellagio ones were off?”

Yuta gripped his arm. Doyoung ignored him.

“Oh, yeah, then you know,” said Jaemin, and laughed. “He was pretty blasted, he came up to me at like 3am asking if I’d seen the most beautiful boy in the universe on this street…”

Yuta let out a strangled laugh. Jaemin forged on, “Talking about how cute the guy was, and how easily he got pissed off, but apparently that was cute, and how smart he was, and how he had this tsundere thing where he was guarded and stuff but was warm underneath, and on and on and on. And he said he wanted to find him so he could tell him he was the first person he’d ever felt this way about, and he was convinced the guy didn’t like him but he was going to tell him anyway because he couldn’t wait any longer. He asked me if—”

“Hahaha!” Yuta puffed out through a terrified square smile. Jaemin broke off and turned his grin towards Yuta, who was frozen.

“He asked you if what?” said Doyoung.

“He asked me if he was in love,” said Jaemin, laughing, “and I was like, you know what, dude, you just might be.” Finally he noticed the look on Yuta’s face and frowned a little, then considered Doyoung. “Hey…what’s your name, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“ _Doyoung_ ,” Yuta said for him.

Jaemin’s smile vanished like a candle flame going out. He put his hands on his hips, looked at Yuta, and said, “That’s…him?”

“Oh, god,” said one of Jaemin’s friends.

“What else did he say?” said Doyoung again, and Yuta was shaking his head. Jaemin’s friends each put a hand on his shoulders and they began to drag him away, one of them apologizing over their shoulder, “He has no filter when he’s drunk,” and Doyoung shouted, “What else did he say?” and Jaemin said, “YUTA, I’M SORRY,” and Yuta held out his hands with a helpless, “It’s okay, buddy!”

There were a few moments of silence while they stood and watched Jaemin and his friends go. Then Doyoung turned to Yuta with folded arms.

Yuta avoided his eyes. “Um. What do you say we just forget that ever happened?”

“That stuff you said to him last night,” said Doyoung.

“We can forget it if you want,” said Yuta again.

“Was it all just drunk rambling?”

“Ahh…” Yuta scuffed his shoes on the ground. “That’s…that was…”

“Or did you mean it?” said Doyoung.

Yuta put a hand on his neck. Another gap of silence passed and then he sighed. “I meant it,” he said very quietly.

Something swelled in Doyoung’s throat.

“It’s okay if you just…” said Yuta.

Doyoung put his arms around Yuta’s neck and pulled him into a hug. Yuta let out a breath, and then Doyoung felt his arms wrap around his waist. Doyoung closed his eyes and inhaled the smell of his shampoo.

“Did you remember that guy?” he said after a few seconds.

“Not at first,” said Yuta. His voice was slightly muffled by Doyoung’s jacket.

“Then how come you pretended you did?”

“Because,” Yuta said, “he was so cute and happy to see me, I didn’t want to disappoint him.”

Doyoung lifted his chin from Yuta’s shoulder without unwrapping his arms from his neck. Yuta blinked at him, his eyes round.

“I had a dream last night,” said Doyoung.

Yuta’s head tilted.

Doyoung said, “You told me you loved me in it.”

“What did you say?” Yuta asked.

“I don’t know. I think the dream didn’t go that far.” Yuta’s eyes were watching Doyoung’s lips move. “But it reminded me of home—the dream.”

Yuta smiled a little and said, “At this rate, it might not have been a dream.”

They looked at each other for a while. Finally Doyoung said, “I guess we might never know for sure.”

“I think,” said Yuta, “we both know.”

Doyoung was thinking _I’m never going to let you go_. Somehow in place of that he said, “Tell you what, you be my boyfriend…”

“Okay,” said Yuta before he was finished.

“…so I can hear you say it sober someday.”

“You will,” Yuta said. Doyoung smiled. “And you were right,” said Yuta, “when you said that drunk me wanted to find a fountain last night to be romantic. I didn’t want to admit it but. Yeah.”

“Yeah,” said Doyoung, “I figured.”

“Now can we go do what we came out here to do,” said Yuta, and Doyoung nodded as Yuta’s hand found his.

Something Doyoung didn’t know before Vegas was that Yuta always kept his promises. For this one, it was three months later, in Seoul, after he’d just told Doyoung that his obsession with matching his hats to his outfit was weird. “You know all that comment does is makes you an asshole with no style, right?” Doyoung had replied. Yuta looked over his laptop at him and said, “I love you.”

Doyoung stopped, dropped the gray and green hats from either hand, and said, “Finally.”

“Oh my god, that’s all you’re going to say?” said Yuta as Doyoung got onto the couch and moved his laptop.

“This is what I mean when I say you have to work on your patience,” said Doyoung, climbing on top of him. “If you had just waited two seconds, I would have already said it back by now.”

“You are the only person in the world who would lecture his boyfriend after the first slash second time he said ‘I love you’ instead of saying it back.”

Doyoung bent his face towards Yuta’s. “That’s why you love me,” he said and kissed him.

“I love you because you’re you,” said Yuta, ducking out of the kiss. “There’s a slight difference.”

“I love you too,” said Doyoung. Yuta met his kiss full-on and pulled him down to the couch with him.

**Author's Note:**

> SO GUYS!! the original idea for this story was not mine! i joined doyufest 2019 back in september and claimed prompt number 7, but after the first check in, we all stopped hearing from the mods so after a while i just figured i would post the fic! the prompt went like this:  
> "Doyoung, Yuta and the rest of their group of friends (the rest of 127) go to Las Vegas to celebrate Jaehyun's bachelor party. Ever the pranksters, Jaehyun and Johnny decide to buy fake wedding rings and put them on the ring finger of the first two to pass out, who turn out to be Yuta and Doyoung."  
> pleeeassseee PLEASE if you know ANYONE who prompted for doyufest, ask them if this prompt was theirs! i would love for my prompter to know that their idea was written!!
> 
> anyway yeh...a huge thank you to my prompter whoever you are!! and thank you to the mods of doyufest who made this story possible. if anyone is in contact with any of them, do let me know!  
> and thank you to my friends who convinced me to finish this even though doyufest wasn't happening anymore, it's thanks to you guys that this is getting posted at all <3
> 
> thank you finally to anyone who read this story! i hope you enjoyed it!!! feel free to leave a comment or message me at @ mfalfanclub on twitter with what you thought, hearing from readers is the best thing in the world :)
> 
> and to anyone who's reading this, don't ever forget that you are the only human being on earth who is exactly like you! you are unique! you are irreplaceable! you are not perfect, because no one is, but you are special. have a lovely day and don't forget to eat & drink your water


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